Last night at Opening Night Live we saw a new trailer for Survival Horror Alan Wake 2. While Remedy doesn’t have a booth at the convention center itself, the developers brought the game to Cologne and held a presentation at a nearby cinema. I had the opportunity to be there.
Remedy was the first to show us a live action clip that transitions in and out of it perfectly smoothly. In particular, we saw a talk show hosted by Mr. The door, and somewhat unintentionally, Alan Wake appeared in it. He was completely bewildered, which made for a few light-hearted moments, as well as a little familiarity with the Dark Place. The book “Dedication” was featured here, which literally tells the story of Alan forgetting that he wrote the book.
This was followed by the main passage, about 40 minutes of gameplay of Alan himself. First of all, it should be said that the developers showed the PC version with path tracing and the game looks fantastic. Not only in terms of lighting, shadows or reflections, but great details. Because of this, the atmosphere is very strong, and I think that Thomas Pugh’s statement that Alan Wake 2 will quite possibly be the most graphically advanced game of the year is justified. I didn’t notice any texture bouncing or similar issues, just a few moments of stuttering, but not much. In addition, the image was absolutely clean, without the annoying flickering associated with Control’s problematic ray tracing. The recently introduced DLSS 3.5 seems to help a lot here.
The dark place took the form of New York City, where Alan lived for a long time and where his series of books about a detective named Alex Casey is set. By the way, this can also be found here. He doesn’t just accompany Saga Anderson in reality, a darker version of him confronts Alan in the new trailer. At the same time, the writer contacted an unknown person through a phone booth, who should help him escape from the Dark Place. The demo also featured a man named Tim Breaker, who, apparently, will also help Alan. Is he the brother of Bright Falls Sheriff Sarah Breaker? Hard to tell. Of course, when talking with him, the developers deliberately excluded the dialogue option “Who is this mysterious person.”
While in reality the Saga is facing off against the cultists, in the Dark Place Alan is fighting “shadow enemies”. But they don’t always have to be real. By doing this, Remedy shows that the writer is not entirely sane and does not know what is real. So after covering many of them, nothing may happen at all, but some of them are real and will fight you. Alan has a pistol at the start, but his ammo is very limited and needs to be protected. By the way, the inventory is made in the style of Resident Evil, so the number of slots you have is also limited.
Light was an important element in the first part, and in the sequel, perhaps it will play an even greater role. Alan has a special flashlight at his disposal, which can turn off or highlight certain locations, which will change their appearance. And here I really take my hat off to Remedy, because the change of assets happens absolutely instantly and no texture bounce is really visible. Even transitions in Ratchet are not that fast.
Just like the Anderson saga has its own “thinking place”, Alan has his own writer’s room that you can switch to at any time in the game, and again the transition is completely instant, without any download. The Northlight engine seems to be using some sort of dark magic. In short, it takes full advantage of technologies such as DirectStorage. The important thing is that at this stage, Alan can look at the clues he found and connect them. In particular, it collects information about locations and some topics. As a result, Alan can literally rewrite reality. For example, if they connect the empty poverty and the cultists, various symbols will appear in this place and a path that can be followed. There’s always only one right link (which moves you forward in the story), but the developers have stated that even the “wrong” ones can lead you to something interesting.
The demo ended with a very interesting scene where it crossed paths with Saga Anderson’s June demo. She eventually reached a place called “Overlap” where two dimensions intersect. And it is here that he first meets Alan, because they both hear each other, albeit in comparison with interruptions and not for long. But no doubt it will play its part. As a reminder, in select save rooms (which work just like in any Survival Horror) you can switch between characters as you wish, and it’s up to you to decide in what order you complete each mission. At the same time, in them you have the opportunity to explore locations outside the main plot, the developers promise the same degree of freedom as in Control.
I had high hopes for Alan Wake 2, but I won’t exaggerate if I say this preview surpassed them in every way. I thought the Saga passages already showed a lot of new, very interesting mechanics, but when you have Alan being played differently again… I really run out of words to even describe how great the whole game feels. . Remedy was not exaggerating when they said that this is by far their most ambitious project yet. And I can’t wait to start working on the full version at the end of October. I think the game of the year hasn’t been decided yet.
Alan Wake 2 releases October 27 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Source :Indian TV
